Halving is coming: what’s happening with Ordinals and Runes?

Author: @DWFVentures; Compiler: Vernacular Blockchain

Bitcoin halving is coming in a few days! The ecosystem is busy, especially with the activities of Ordinal and Rune, let's take a deeper look.

Introduced by @rodarmor in January 2023, Ordinal increased the amount of data that can be stored on the blockchain, popularizing inscriptions. This inspired a series of innovations using the system, such as BRC-20 and Rune, the differences between which are shown in the table below.

With the Bitcoin halving and the launch of the Rune protocol, Ordinal's transaction volume has grown exponentially, expected in April. It is worth noting that Bitcoin's trading volume has been almost on par with Ethereum over the past month, with the main markets being @okx and @MagicEden.

（Link: https://dune.com/domo/ordinals-marketplaces）

The most well-known NFT collections on Ordinals include @nodemonkes, @BitcoinPuppets, and @QuantumCatsXYZ.

In addition to having strong community support, holders of these collections have also received various airdrops, such as @runestone_ETH, @rune_coin, and @PupsToken.

The value of some of these airdrops is quite high, creating a wealth effect for the Ordinal/Rune ecosystem. Similar to WIF, this generates a loyal community that helps drive the story even more intensely. As a result, excitement about Rune Protocol is high.

The Rune Protocol is designed to be an interchangeable counterpart to Ordinal and is being developed by @rodarmor. It aims to attract long-term user/developer engagement by:

• Reduced complexity through a UTXO-based model (closer to Bitcoin)

• Lower data and storage requirements relative to BRC-20

Recently, projects that got early exposure to the Rune Protocol have gained attention. @rune_coin holders can mine RSIC runes and merge/pool their holdings with other miners to potentially earn more runes after the halving. The RSIC presale is ongoing on @whalesmarket.

@PupsToken is the leading MemeCoin in the rune space. Part of the supply has been airdropped to @BitcoinPuppets/OPIUM holders, forming a strong community from the start. Interoperability with Solana via @Multibit_Bridge has also helped increase attention to it.

With the halving approaching, we expect many protocols to launch or migrate to Rune. Despite concerns about fragmentation/lack of unified standards, we believe this lays a solid foundation for enhanced application scenarios and there will be massive interest similar to the launch of BRC-20.